How would you like to fly from NYC to London in under 3 hours… instead of the 7+ hours it currently takes?
This could be our reality thanks to a breakthrough by supersonic flight startup Boom, which recently completed its second test flight. Its jet will fly at roughly 1,120 mph, twice as fast as current airliners.
We’ve had the technology to fly much faster for decades. Yet we just… don’t? Passenger planes haven’t sped up at all since the 1970s.
A pointless plateau in flight speeds
There is no physical or technological reason why we can’t go much faster. In fact, the Concorde was ferrying passengers at supersonic speeds in the ‘70s.
Why’d we slow down?
Supersonic planes are like powerful sports cars. Incredibly fast, and loud as hell. When a plane flies faster than the speed of sound, the air in front of it compresses and forms an invisible wall.
Suddenly, BOOM! You just punched through the sound barrier. Here’s what a sonic boom looks like, from a special camera that can see the compression of air:
Source: NASA
Passengers onboard can’t hear the thunder-like crack, but folks down below can. In 1964 the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) conducted 1,253 sonic booms over Oklahoma to test how disruptive they were. Three in four residents said they didn’t mind. But a tiny 3% minority raised hell.
That was enough for the FAA to outlaw supersonic flight in US airspace in 1973. From that point, the Concorde could only unleash its true speed over ocean. This severely limited the routes the Concorde could take, which guaranteed no airline could make money flying supersonic. The last Concorde flight was in 2003.
A few thousand people in Oklahoma City in the 1960s halted all progress in flight speed.
Startup Boom aims to transform flying by making it quieter. It’s created an engine that’s quiet and efficient at slower speeds for flying over land, but can go supersonic over oceans. This is a very hard problem to solve at a reasonable cost, which is why only the military has such planes today.
Boom is also designing the shape of the jet to deafen sonic booms. Think a soft thump instead of an earth-shattering roar that can break windows if it happens at too low an altitude.
In short, its supersonic jets will be able to fly anywhere.
“There are some people who look at [supersonic jets] and say… we should use less energy; we should go to fewer places.”
That’s a quote from Boom’s founder Blake Scholl. Ugh. Depressing. Instead let’s build a future of abundance where more people can go more places more often, without ruining the planet.
Maybe in a few years you'll be planning your weekend getaways to the other side of the world.
If you could be anywhere in just a few hours, where would you go? Dream big!
This is the kind of can-do spirit we must celebrate. Sonic booms are a real problem. I wouldn’t want explosive noises over my house either.
But that doesn’t mean we just give up. Don’t ban supersonic flight because it’s noisy. Solve the problem!
There should be no doubt innovators like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos would’ve already solved this problem had they been allowed to innovate in the last 50 years. Instead, we got regulation and stagnation.
The quest for supersonic travel isn't just about getting from A to B faster. Was putting a man on the moon a waste of money? Maybe. But the scientific knowledge we gained in the space race led to portable computers… CAT scans… water filtration systems… and solar panels.
What modern miracles will supersonic flight unlock? Only one way to find out!
The next fracking?
Rational optimists know fracking has been awesome for America.
It’s unlocked decades’ worth of cheap natural gas, allowing us to close down 300+ dirtier coal plants and slash total carbon emissions by almost 20% since 2006.
Unlike Europe, America achieved this without sacrificing prosperity and growth. America’s annual GDP has grown $5 trillion and its population has grown by 36 million WHILE its carbon emissions fell 20%. Why isn’t this front-page news?
Fracking also transformed the USA into an energy superpower. Did you know America now produces more oil than any country, ever?
Packy McCormick at Not Boring recently wrote about Texan chemist John Burba, who looks to have invented a “new” fracking.
Burba pioneered Direct Lithium Extraction which makes it possible to “extract lithium… in less than an hour, compared to the months or years required by traditional methods.”
More lithium = more powerful batteries. More powerful batteries will unlock innovations in solar, EVs, drones, and a lot of other tech we can’t even dream of yet.
Burba is now using this technique to pull lithium out of the ground in Texas and Arkansas.
Odds that America will be the world’s lithium king a decade from now? Rapidly rising.
Innovators vs. bureaucrats: choose your fighter
In 2021 President Biden passed a $42.5 billion law to roll out high speed internet across rural America.
Sounds great. Everyone should have internet.
Three years later not a single property has been connected!
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Starlink (owned by SpaceX) lets anyone access high-speed internet through a global satellite network, even in far-flung places like Zimbabwe.
The US government says 7.2 million homes and businesses lack broadband access. The $42.5 billion it plans to spend digging up roads and laying cable would be enough to buy a Starlink dish for each location and give them a three-year subscription.
Unfortunately for rural Americans, Starlink was excluded from the program. For what reason? Unclear. Because rocket man bad, I guess.
Cynics die young. Don’t be one.
Being cynical is horrible for your health.
Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman recently discussed this on his podcast with Jamil Zaki.
I like how they defined cynicism: a lack of positive anticipation about the future. Cynics don’t trust anyone. They’re not curious, and assume the worst in people even when presented with contrary evidence.
Unfortunately, people perceive cynics to be smarter, even though they’re not. Study after study shows cynics are less happy and die younger. Not to mention cynicism makes you a worse spouse, parent, and friend.
The easiest way to shove away cynicism? Turn off the news. The corporate media falsely makes us fear things and people.
Look at this chart from Our World in Data. It compares what people actually die from (left) vs. what the media covers (right). Terrorism, murders, suicides… watch too much news and you’d think the #1 cause of death is humans killing each other.
Source: Our World in Data
Practice rational optimism. It can add years to your life!
See you next week.
Stephen McBride
PS: What should I write about next week?
How capitalism and innovation are great for the environment.
The revival of nuclear power, which can bring us cheap, clean, safe, and abundant energy.
The emerging “space economy” that’ll let us make new drugs and manufacture new things in microgravity.
Let me know at stephen@rationaloptimistsociety.com.
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